The Avatar Scrolls: Liu Beifong
by PassionateSoul
Summary: TWo hundred years after Avatar Aang, And I was born a slave to slaves... Rated T for suggested themes.
1. Chapter 1

**The rights to 'Avatar: The Last Airbender' belong to Nickalodeon and co-creators Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzk. I own nothing.**

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><p><em>"They say that the second time the Fire Nation invaded, they succeded.<em>

_I don't know much about the days of Peace, in the time of Avatar Aang. All I've known is the life of a Fire Nation slave under the rule of the Phoenix King. Of course, out here in the Borderlands, near the swamp, we answer to Lord Zhao and his lady wife Azula. Or what we call her in the slave quarters, the Dragon Mistress._

_I don't know much about the art of Bending, mostly passed down from my father and Grandfather Iroh in his tea shop. The Fire Nation wanted it that way. They bided their time until the avatar was once again born into their country. When the Second Nation War was over and the smoke cleared, it was the Fire Nation that ruled. The enemy benders were enslaved; most were killed. The only art that wasn't completely lost was Fire Bending, and they used it to keep us down._

_A hundred years of oppression and I was born a slave to slaves, along with my younger brother and sister. My mother said we were an important family long ago, and that our ancestor was the greatest earth bender ever, but in these days I'm just Liu Beifong. I was no one special. I didn't want to be, until I found out that I was the next Avatar."_

-Liu Beifong, _The Avatar Scrolls_


	2. Chapter 2

**This is a work of (fan) fiction. **The rights to 'Avatar: The Last Airbender' belong to Nickalodeon and co-creators Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzk. I own nothing.****

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><p>The year it happened was like any other for me as I hurried down the length of the slave quarters. I was looking for my younger brother, Aang. He was always running off to one place or another.<p>

"Aang! Aang, where are you?" I called, my eyes darting over the familiar faces of my fellow slaves, my hands trying to tuck the heavy fabric of my cleaning robes up to my knees to go faster. I reached the end of the slave quarters, where Grandfather Iroh was opening his small tea shop that he ran out of his own quarters. While most slaves were denied small luxuries like tea, he was one of the privledged few males that were favored by Lord Zhao, so he was allowed a few more freedoms than others. I tried to spend as much time as I could in conversation with him. After his true grandson, Zuko, ran off to the swamps, he seemed lonely all by himself in his quarter. It also got me a free cup of tea now and then. "Hello, Grandfather." I said, giving him the youth-adressing-elders bow. "Have you seen my brother Aang?" He smiled, as always amused at my use of propriety to another slave.

"I may have seen him pass by on his way to the main house." He said in his smooth, rustic voice. "My guess? He is spying on young Lady Katara in the training grounds again. He seems to be thinking of nothing else these days. A boy becoming a man. It is a difficult time." he sighed wistfully, lost in his own memories. He handed me a steaming cup of tea. "While you are here, try this lovely blend of orange blossom and mint." I took the cup from him and sipped the sweet-smelling liquid gratefully. The orange was smooth, while the mint gave it a cool aftertaste. It was devine.

"Delicious, as always, Grandfather." I said truthfully. He snorted.

"How can I improve if you continue to compliment me?" He asked in mock frustration, but winked at me. I handed him the cup and bowed in farewell before rushing off to collect my brother. I walked the small tree-lined path to the outer training courtyard gate. As Grandfather Iroh guessed, my brother was crouching in the bushes, spying on the training of Lord Zhao's children. Young Lady Katara and young Lord Sokka were training with Master Shin Fu. I surreptiously glanced at a shirtless Sokka doing his kata excercises. He was handsome young man with his dark skin and unusual blue eyes, and a favorite among the ladies of the house. Every slave and servant girl wanted him to bed them and every noble lady wanted their parents to arrange a marriage with him. I admit that he did look fine without his shirt and moving smoothly into fighting stances. Katara, on the other hand, was struggling with the most basic defence stances. Master Shin Fu was liberal with his correction staff, nudging her none-too-gently into the right position. She had a miserable look on her face as he rapped her knee for being too far wasn't as good as Sokka, I mused as my eyes wanderd to him again. Tearing my eyes away from her brother, I pounced on mine.

"What do you think you are doing?" I hissed. He almost jumped into plain sight before I shoved him away from the enterance. "You're supposed to be cleaning the stables! Don't you remember the last whipping you got from Master Shin Fu for spying on the Young Master and Mistress?"

"But, sis-!" He began a little too loudly, but I silenced him by grabbing his left ear. The boy had plenty big ears, and it was my favorite handhold when he was in trouble.

"I don't want to hear it!" I whispered angerily. " Get back into the stables and don't come back out until your work is done!" With a smack to his head and a kick to his behind, I sent him on his way.

"What a kind sister you are." A stuffy, falsely cultured voice said behind me. I stiffened and turned around in dread. Master Shin Fu was standing in the gateway, arms crossed, correction staff tapping his shoulder. "Liberal discipline is the proper way to train a child." He continued, leering at me. I gritted my teeth but bowed to him respectfully.

"Better I discipline him with love than someone who favors harsher punishments." I said to the ground. I felt the sharp sting of his staff on my bowed head.

"Better punishment than mercy." He snapped, rapping me on the head again. "Do well to leash that boy, or I shall have BOTH of you whipped next time he lingers at my training yard." I bowed deeper and left.

With my brother to his work, I set to mine. I worked in the main house as a cleaning maid. Anything that had a gleam or a polish was under my charge. I swept dusted and scrubbed all day long, save when I served dinner to the 'noble' family. When the dinner bells sounded, I would take off my cleaning robes and change into the serving kimono that all of the servants were forced to wear. It consisted of a thin silk kimono over a rough spun under-robe, with padding that those of us with curvier figures had to wrap around our waist. It was shapeless and uncomfortable. During dinner, I had to keep alert for Lord Zhao's roaming hands and Lady Azula's sharp gaze. It was also the time where Sokka would tell me he wanted to see me that night by way of a note in his used napkin. There was gossip about my late nights in the main house circulating around the slave quarters, but most were too tired or too broken to listen or spread them. It was also said that it was Zhao and not Sokka that kept me here, but Sokka was the only man I had ever been with. He knew that as well, and that was good enough for me.

"I saw you at the training yard." He said afterwards. I looked up from my place at the foot of the bed where I was looking for my other sandal. He was stretched out on his huge bed in the center of the room, etirely nude and entirely sinful.

"So?" I asked as I retied my robe tighter, but a blush formed on my cheeks. He grinned, sitting up and reaching to pull me back onto the bed. He cuddled me betweeen his legs, his arms around my waist.

"And why weren't you working like a good little servant?" he teased, untying my sash.

"it was an accident. I was just passing by." I tried to deny, bbut he was nuzzling my neck, stroking my hair to one side.

"I also saw Shi Fu hit you on the head." he whispered, rubbing the exact spot where his master's staff landed. I winced as his fingers found the tender spot. "That old boar-monkey doesn't know how to treat a woman as beautiful as you."

"Enough of your flattery" I muttered, pulling away from his touch. "That hurts, you know." I heard his honeyed words since childhood. He was my nursing brother, my childhood friend, and my lover. There wasn't a time in our shared lives that I sought him out or he sought me. There was only one rule to this relationship; no mouth-kissing, established after my mother read us 'The Spider-Frog Warrior'.

"Poor baby. Want me to kiss it better?"

"Do what you like." I muttered, leaning back to rest my head on his shoulder. He kissed my cheek tenderly. "That's not where it hurts." I said. He grinned and kissed below my ear. "Still wrong." His mouth found my neck. "At this rate, you'll never find it." I said in mock-exasperation.

"I still have an hour." He growled, flipping me over and settling on top of me.

Whe I finally made my way home, it was a few hours before dawn, when I had to get up and extinguish the night lanterns.

"The whore's back." My younger sister, Mai, muttered when I flopped into the bed that my siblings and I shared. We could have had our own seperate pallets, but it was lonely (and cold) at night.

"Shut up, Mai." I said, exhausted. Aang scooted closer to me.

"Do you really... with him? With Sokka?" he asked in a small voice. Even in the semi-dark, I could see his big grey eyes staring at me.

"It's either him or Lord Zhao." I said, not sparing him the truth. Slaves had to grow up fast, even if I didn't want my brother to. "And you know he briuses his women. Remember Mother?" I felt him wrap his arms around me and rest his head on my chest. I put my arm around his shoulder and held him. Even Mai scooted closer than she usually did. The day our mother came back from her night with Lord Zhao with a briused face was etched into our memories. We had never seen him so angry, or so humble as he begged Lady Azula to sell his family somewhere else. She conceded,but in her own cruel way. The nobles that they were sold to couldn't afford the children, one just old enough to put in a full-day's labor and two that weren't going to be ready for a couple of years. And so we were seperated. It had been five years since we had last seen our parents.

"We'd eat better if you did." Mai muttered. It seemed that all she did was mutter foul depressing things all day. I reached over Aang with my leg and kicked her.

"Don't even joke about that!" I hissed. Aang poked us both.

"Stop it, both of you. Be nice to each other, at least until dawn." He said. We both conceeded to Aang: Family peacemaker. That is until Mai smacked me before I fell asleep.

Morning came too soon. I groaned as I sat up and blinked at the weak light of dawn.

"Come on, everyone." I said, shaking my siblings awake. "Time to get up. Another day and all." I shoved their limbs off of me and got out of bed. I walked out of our small, one room hut and put on the handmade grass sandals that I had made myself two years ago.

"We need more bread." Mai called as I walked out. Just then, my sandal strap snapped. I sighed as I stopped to fix it for the thousanth time. If it wasn't one thing, it was another. It seemed like there wasn't enough of anything in the Quarters. Even with the three Beifong children working a full-day's labor for our rations of food, there was only enough for a meal apiece on a good day. I shook those thoughts from my head. I still remembered the last slave that complained to Lady Azula about the amount of food. Or at least the pieces of him that came back.

I entered the slave's bathing house to change into the Lady-Azula-approved work outfit. It consisted of a dark red short-sleeved over-robe with made of durable material and matching apron that fit around the waist. There were three rows of golden-colored frog buttons to keep them closed; two at the waist, underneath and outside, and one at the collar to hide the cleavage exposed by the spare undershirt that kept the rough-but-fine-looking material from rubbing the skin raw. They were hot, bulky and cumbersom, not to mention in one shapeless size. Even the fattest slave (though a fat slave was a rare occurring) couldn't fit properly. Still, it did keep her husband's wandering eyes in check, to a point.

My first task of the day was to clean the front enterance. While I don't like to compliment my former masters, they did have a beautiful house. Made completely of rosewood in the Homeland fashion, it was open, but grand. I especially liked the fact that it was styled after the Fire Lord's palace in the Homeland. Scrolls, tapestries and porceline were arranged tastefully around the entire room, each one representing the grandeur of the Zhao household and telling stories of the Homeland. The way our masters practically worshipped the Homeland, I imagined that it must be a paradise in itself. No slave has ever set foot on Homeland soil, but the natives love to regale the slaves with stories, whether the want to hear them or not. Of course, the slaves tell many different stories about the Homeland. They used to say that the Homeland used to be a single country, and that there were actually four nations that lived in harmony under the guidance of the all-powerful Avatar. I dismissed them as hearth-tales to keep the hope of change alive. There was a time and a place for hope, and today wasn't it.

I filled the bucket used for cleaning floors, grabbed the mop and flipped the polishing broom over my shoulder before heading to my work. There used to be two other girls that cleaned, but I asked them if I could do it by myself. They were only too happy to let me. one less job for them. They didn't know about my little trick. It was simply a matter of using Bending. Water Bending, to be precise. It was a risk to do it within the master's house. No doubt I would be shipped off to New Ozai or the steel factories. Any Bender that wasn't Fire was a highly-prized commodity, considering how few of us were actually out there. But it was in the dawn hours, when most of the household would be asleep and it was easier to use my bending. Instead of splashing bucketful after bucketful of water on the polished wooden floors and scrubbing up the dirt while the other two girls wiped it up and ring the water out into another bucket, I would Bend the water over the floor, scrub up the dirt, and then Bend the same water into the bucket where I would separate it from the dirt and do it all over again. It took less time and I got some form of training in the process.

It was no secret that the Beifong family had Earth Bending in their blood. Half of our family was sold in hopes that they would breed more Earth Benders for the mines. So for me to be able to Water Bend was a curiosity for my parents, which turned into downright panic after I told my mother that I could also move rocks with my fist just like my father did in the secret field by the swamp. I was told to keep it a secret or I would never see them again. After that, I would join my father (and then later, Mai) to practice the Art in secret after lights out. He used to tell us that the Beifongs used to be the wealthies and the most skilled of all the Earth Benders, and that we honor our great ancestors by keeping it alive. I tried hard to master the few tecniques that had survived the years of war and opression. After I did, my father took me to see the Swamp Folk, the reclusive and impossible people who escaped the tyranny of the Fire nation, to learn Water Bending. "You have a skill, you better learn to use it." He whispered as they sized me up and fitted me with swamp clothes. The Swamp Folk took me in for an entire year, teaching me their way of life (which was mostly 'et anythin' that don' et yu furst') and the Art of Water Bending. I lerned quickly, mostly because I wanted to learn and mostly because I missed my family. I came back a Water Bender to welcome a new little sibling; my brother Aang. I was always amazed that the overseers didn't notice I was gone, but as my mother said; "They don't care unless you're old enough to work."

With a final push of the polishing broom, I finished my first task of the day. I wondered why my mind wandered to such things while my body was occupied.

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><p><strong>Test chapter. Comments, notes, and reviews are appreciated. Any details are also welcomed.<strong>


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